Something odd about that Potter kid
by Hunchbook
Summary: Cheryl Rothery has just started Special Ed and is having more than a little trouble adjusting. Now she has to deal with Harry Potter and figure out why he was on the roof last week...


Author's note: This story is in part my explanation of why Harry was allowed to go so long in the public school system without the help that kids in his position usually get, and part a tribute to all the Special Ed teachers out there. I've met some great ones. Mostly though, it's dedicated to my mom who taught me what a Special Ed Resource Teacher should be like, and Amanda, who (unknown to her) gave me the idea.

I own lots of stuff. Harry Potter + Co is not one of them.

* * *

Cheryl Rothery sighed and rubbed her eyes. On a normal day she didn't like being vomited on. Today it was making her wish she'd stayed in a classroom and far, far away from special education. It had taken half an hour before Bridget McCormac's parents had arrived, and another half hour to explain to them that it wasn't the school's responsibility to force Ritalin on their child if she insisted on regurgitating it. Eventually they had left, but Cheryl doubted she'd convinced them to seek a second opinion about their daughter's disability.

The intercom buzzed. "Miss Rothery, are you ready or shall we push it back another day?"

Pushing the button, she forced cheer into her voice for the school secretary's benefit. "No, no Mrs Heffernan, that's not fair of me to do. Call him down."

Pulling another file from her overflowing desk, she kept an ear open to make sure the secretary didn't put the call on the school-wide PA again, but stuck to classroom specific lines. It was embarrassing enough for kids to be called to the office, best if the whole school wasn't made aware.

Skimming the file, Cheryl mentally kicked herself for not seeing to the boy sooner. In the month and a half since she'd been made head of Special Education at this school she'd done her best to review every file her predecessor had; reassess several of the more unclear cases; and at the very least, get to know every child under her care. Perhaps if she'd made more of an effort the poor kid wouldn't have seen the need to start climbing buildings. Still, there was a reason she'd saved this case for last, all the other teachers had warned her, and she was beginning to see for herself: there was definitely something odd about that Potter kid.

A hesitant knock sounded on the door to the small room outside her office. Picking up the folder, a notebook, and some coloured pens, she walked into the room and opened the door. A small, skinny boy stood there. His navy blue sweater was obviously a hand-me-down and hung nearly to his knees. He looked up at her curiously from under a thick mop of very black hair, and pushed his taped glasses up his nose with a hand too small to emerge from his sleeve.

"Hello, Harry," she said, bending down to shake his hand, "I'm Miss Rothery."

Still gazing curiously at her face, the boy shook out his sleeve and grasped her hand. "Pleased to meet you," he said quietly.

_Quiet but not shy_ Cheryl made a mental note, ushering the boy into the room. It was a bright room with cheerful wallpaper and a whiteboard on one end. She'd done her best to make the room as non-threatening as possible when she'd taken over; children needed to feel at ease when they were assessed for autism or taking their daily dose of brain chemicals.

The interview started the way it did with most children. How's school, what's your favourite subject, what do you think of the teacher, simple questions that children were used to getting from adults. The first hiccup came when she asked him about his friends.

"I don't have any." was the simple response.

"Any?"

"No."

"You mean you don't get along with your classmates?"

"No, they just don't want to get beat up."

"Beat up?"

"By Dudley. He likes to beat me up, so the other kids stay away from me so they won't get beat up too."

"But, you get along with them when Dudley's not around?" She got a slightly confused look at that. "I mean, in class. When you do group work, are the kids nice then?"

He smiled for the first time since he'd arrived, "Yeah, yeah, that's one of my favourite parts of school. Dudley never pays attention to anything in class."

She smiled and kept the conversation on similar topics for a while. He seemed like a good kid, she found herself not wanting to question him about the roof climbing incident. Eventually she broached the subject of family.

"You live with your aunt and uncle?"

"Yes."

"Are they good to you?"

"I guess so."

"Do you know what happened to your parents?"

"They died."

"How do you feel about that?"

A pause. "Lonely."

"You miss them?"

"Yeah."

"Have you ever talked to your aunt and uncle about them?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I'm not supposed to."

That shocked her. _Call aunt and uncle_ she wrote in bright purple in her notebook.

"How does that make you feel?"

Another pause "I don't know."

"Do you want to know more about your mom and dad?"

"Yeah."

Cheryl stared at the boy sitting so seriously in the chair next to hers, once again kicking herself that she hadn't seen to him sooner. He was obviously dealing with feelings of abandonment, and probably self-esteem issues as well. At the very least he was having trouble developing socially because of his bullying cousin. She asked him a few more questions about his parents and his aunt and uncle until the intercom crackled again.

"Miss Rothery, Harry needs to get back to class to pack up for the end of the day."

Startled, Cheryl looked up at the clock. They had been talking for nearly forty-five minutes. "Oh, er, right, Mrs. Heffernan, he's on his way." She turned back to Harry. "Did you enjoy talking to me today?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Well hopefully we'll be able to talk again soon."

For only the second time that afternoon, the boy smiled. "Okay." Then he was gone.

The phone conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Dursely didn't go nearly so well.

"You're supposed to be figuring out why he was on that blasted roof not picking apart his worthless brain!" The angry man on the other end had yelled when she brought up his insecurities.

"Dudders would never hurt a fly!" wailed the woman when Cheryl mentioned Dudley's bullying.

"Not our problem other kids don't like him." was the angry man's response to Harry's social depravation.

"We don't associate with _that kind_ of people," sniped the woman when Cheryl suggested they talk to Harry about his parents.

Which was only slightly better than her husband's response of: "Good-for-nothing, worthless fools who deserved worse than what they got!"

"_We_ took him in didn't we?" was both of their replies to her suggestion that Harry had abandonment issues.

Finally, Cheryl hung up the phone. It was hard enough to get a social worker into the school on the best of circumstances, and she couldn't book a psychological assessment for a child whose guardians were so vehemently against it. Plus, Children's Aid was stretched so thin in this area; it would take ages for them to respond to her call unless it involved immediate physical danger. Putting her head in her hands, she knew the aunt and uncle would just put on some kind of show when the Aid worker did show up. Maybe send the poor kid to a neighbour or another relative for the day.

Sighing, she pulled her daybook toward her. There was one thing she could do. Due to the nature of her job, it was rare that solutions were so obvious. She just wished this one was a little more hopeful.

Harry never went to another late Tuesday class. As soon as the last recess was over, and often as soon as it started, he was in the interview room next to Cheryl's office. At first they kept to pretty much the same routine as the first interview, but soon they began to change it up. It started when she had forgotten to eat lunch and so bought them both crisps from the vending machine in the hall. Harry had been fascinated that some of the crisps could stack while others would cause the entire tower to topple. The next week she brought Jenga.

After that, their meetings became weekly fun time. Sometimes they would have a board game. Sometimes they would draw on the whiteboard. Sometimes Cheryl would bring a craft. Sometimes she would just have piles of shredding to do and they would chat while feeding stacks of paper into the machine.

It was during one of these sessions that she found out about the roof climbing incident.

"I don't know how I got there."

"Don't know as in you don't want to tell me or don't remember the route?"

"Neither. I really don't know, one minute I was on the ground, the next I wasn't."

"There must be something in between there."

He wasn't looking at her. "Well, I jumped. But just to get behind some waste bins. I guess the, the… wind… caught me, or… something."

She watched him carefully, "But you don't really believe that, do you?"

He looked up, startled "Wha-What else could it be?"

"Harry, you may be small for your age, but you're not a feather. No one could jump from the ground to the roof of the school."

He stared down at the papers in his hand. "I didn't climb it," he mumbled.

"I never said you did. I just figured maybe the explanation is more… unusual than you think it is."

He gazed up at her, his eyes still fearful. "You don't think I did it?"

She stopped feeding paper into the machine and met his gaze. "I don't think you would lie to me, no."

"My uncle says I'm a liar. He says there's an explanation for everything."

She sniffed, turning back to the task. _Choose your words carefully, Cheryl_ she warned herself. "Your uncle is..." She tried again. "Your uncle doesn't understand everything in the world does he?"

"N-no, I guess not." She could almost see years of fear of the man rising to the surface.

"Nobody does. There are hundreds of things in this world that have no explanation whatsoever. Perhaps," she turned to look at him, "perhaps you're one of those things Harry."

He smiled and stuck another pad into the shredder.

By May, Harry was visiting her three times a week, skipping out on recess breaks whenever she wasn't busy. Helping her with her filing, cleaning the white board, sorting the puzzles she kept in the corner, and of course there was always shredding. Near the end of June he asked her where she'd be in the fall. She gave her answer some thought before speaking.

"Here. For the longest time I just wanted to be back in the classroom, but I think I can make a real difference with this position. At the very least, I can get to know a few kids really well. Whether that helps or not remains to be seen."

He gave her a tentative smile, but didn't say anything.

On the last day of school he slipped into the room as she finished up a phone call with Bridget McCormac's new specialist.

"I'm not coming back in the fall," he said.

"I know."

"I'll be going to Stonewall High, I'll probably never see you again."

"You don't know that for sure."

The look he gave her said he didn't hold up much hope.

"I made this for you. I wanted to get you something, but I've been grounded." He placed a sheet of paper on the desk and ran from the room.

Slowly, Cheryl unfolded the picture. She smiled, then turned to go. Suddenly she stopped and stared at the picture again. Had he winked? Had the man in the picture winked at her?

For years and years, Cheryl didn't see Harry again, but she kept framed on her desk a small pencil crayon drawing of a big man on a flying motorcycle.


End file.
